Reliance General Insurance

P Chidambaram asks for compulsory digitization of insurance policies

PressContent

​Hyderabad, Sept 16, 2013

Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram, on Monday, during the launch of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority’s (IRDA) insurance repository system said that digitization of insurance policies should be made compulsory.

Chidambaram has asked the Indian insurance regulator IRDA to ‘prepare a time frame for mandatory digitization of all the insurance policies in the country’. “This should have been implemented long back,” he added. Chidambaram further said that digitization would make everyone’s life easy even if struck by natural disasters because such situations leads to loss of both property and documents.

During the event, IRDA Chairman T.S. Vijayan said, “insurance penetration in India as of 2012 is only 3.96% and there is huge potential for expansion.” He further said that the industry should design customized insurance policies with enhanced use of technology.” IRDA is also taking initiatives to for ‘consumer education’, Vijayan added.

Speaking on the launch of insurance repository, Vijayan said that it is the first of its kind services in the world. IRDA’s insurance repository services will “offer insurance policyholders option to access their insurance policies online by opening an insurance account in the electronic form, free of cost,” the IRDA Chairman added.

According to IRDA, with insurance repository in existence, changing and making revisions in insurance policies will become very easy and fast for consumers. This service will make the insurance system more efficient, transparent. It will also reduce cost of policy issuance and maintenance.

The insurance repository will provide a unique code number to every single policy holder, and thus will make it easy to maintain the history of the policy details such as claims, nominees, beneficiaries and other data.